Spiced Crumb English Pudding Recipe

WHEN IS PUDDING CREAMY AND WHEN IS IT A CAKE

For those of us in the States, pudding generally refers to a creamy custard dessert. So when a recipe card reads “Spiced Crumb English Pudding Recipe”, one may be led to believe that the final result may be a spiced custard with some type of crumbly topping. Which does sound pretty darn good.

But, if the recipe card has ingredients like shortening, flour, brown sugar, and raisins it starts to feel a little more like what we know as a cake. And so we become a little confused.

We need to look to Britain for the answer to this conundrum. Though pudding can refer to a sweet or savory dish in the U.K., it is most often used the same way we use “dessert”.Like the figgy pudding or plum pudding in a Christmas Carol.

So, it stands to reason that this recipe card from Jane’s recipe box is from a friend who had a connection to English bakers.

WHEN A RECIPE CARD FAILS US

Many times with recipe cards there is an expectation that methods for making certain dishes are inherently understood. But somewhere along the line this knowledge can become lost and so we flounder a bit.

This recipe card was a great example of that. I became a bit confused by the “buttered baking ring”. Did it mean a bundt pan? Not likely, the recipe didn’t make enough batter to fill a bundt pan. And what size of a ring? Nine-inch, ten-inch. Did the ring have a hole in the center? I don’t know.

So, I did what every confused baker would do, I created what I thought a baking ring ought to be. I placed an empty pineapple can in the center of a springform pan, buttered it and then poured in the batter around the “ring” that is made and baked it.

While the pudding was baking, I decided to research a little more and discovered two recipes that were very similar to this one. Guess what? A baking ring is a cake pan 🙂

So, if you decide to make the recipe, you can either use my homemade kind-of-bundt-pan hack or just use a cake pan.

Either way, this English pudding (cake) is delicious with its warming spices and tangy, lemon-curd like sauce.

I hope you enjoy it!

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Recipe Box Roulette

This recipe is from a social media game we developed called Recipe Box Roulette. Find a family recipe box and play along.

The rules are simple. Let your fingers wander over the recipes cards in the box, draw one at random, share it with us on FB Page or on your Instagram Feed. Remember to tag @theheritagcookbookproject and use the hashtag #recipeboxroulette.

I think the thing that was most confusing is that I knew how to make a Plum Pudding which is a lot more involved, so I thought this recipe would have to be a little more complicated than it was. Funny how we tend to make things more complex than they need to be at times 😉

Hey GiGi! It is delicious with the sweetness of the raisins, the warming spicing and the sauce – which I could just eat with a spoon. I hope you enjoy browsing through some of the other Recipe Box Roulette recipes.

Lol, I love this because it goes to show that even experienced bakers have fumbles. I honestly get nervous copying recipes because I feel like I’ll get half way through and it’ll be so wrong. Love the pineapple can idea! xD But you did great, it looks amazing!

When you are relying on recipes on cards that may have been written 40, 50, or even 60 years ago and especially from another country, it makes you put your thinking cap on for sure 😉 The pineapple can, though unnecessary, was kinda fun. Thank you!

What a wonderful cake/pudding! Those British folks are good at figuring out how to use up All The Things. I wonder if this was partly a wartime measure to use up all the dried out bread by making crumbs out of it and turning it into delicious cake? Regardless, this sounds lovely, and I like that it has a hole in the middle. 🙂

My introduction pudding was Pink Floyd, Another Brick in the Wall – “If you don’t eat your meat, you can’t have any pudding! How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?!” 🙂 Thanks Beth, it is definitely a very different process than most of our desserts.

Always interesting with those confusions regarding recipes! I had the same one when I was one a podcast recently, and we discussed scones vs biscuits. What was obvious to me (a European albeit with an American dad) was definitely not obvious to the American host!

I am an American expat living in New Zealand. Here they speak the king’s English so I know the pudding story. It took me ages to understand things like tea is dinner and pudding is dessert – any dessert. And yes English crumb pudding would be a cake, and yours sounds great – especially the lemon sauce.

Yum this sounds delish! I love both lemon and spice cakes so this is right up my alley. It looks so pretty as a ring. I would have done it the same way you did before realizing it was just a cake pan!! Printing this out to make soon!

I love the subtle differences in English. A lot of my English friends kept referring to having puddings at the end of a meal and it took me forever to figure out they were talking about American cake. Wish I had seen your post before embarrassing myself, haha.

Hey Emmy. Well, when this recipe was written sour milk would have been just that, milk that had gone sour. But you can bet that there was not waste in the kitchen. Now days, you can replicate sour milk by adding lemon juice to the milk. The acidity helps to activate the baking soda.